Crazed: A Blood Money Novel (16 page)

“Adam—”

“Listen to me.” Adam ran a frustrated hand through his overlong hair, leaving the unwashed strands sticking up in all directions. “It’s not the time, all right? And they’re not going to kill me.”

“Oh? How do you do know that?” Casey’s big body vibrated with barely leashed anger, aggression radiating off him in waves that had Ilda clinging to the wooden slats, splinters digging into her fingertips.

“It wasn’t Pipe’s decision to kidnap me.” Adam propped his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I don’t know if it was a favor or a paid job or what the deal is, but it sounds like there’s been some sort of... I dunno...falling out, so Pipe is
pissed
with a capital
P
.”

“Who—”

“I dunno, man. You need to pull Della in if you haven’t already, and sic her on any money trails between Pipe and someone who really hates us Faradays, I guess?” Adam’s tone was rife with agitation. “Anyway, Pipe being Pipe, he’s come up with a brilliant plan to get me off his hands, since he apparently doesn’t want me here any more than I want to be here. Go figure.” He paused. “I think he’s a minute away from figuring it all out, Case. Like, who you actually are. If he hasn’t already.”

Stilling, Casey glanced first to Ilda, then Adam. “Oh, yeah?”

“He looked at my face and didn’t particularly like it.” Adam tilted his head toward the light, showing off his bruises. “Gave me these himself once he caught a glimpse of my eyes. And now that I’ve seen your baby girl—”

“Shit.”

Cold dread sank its claws into Ilda’s stomach. “So...so Pipe
knows
.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. No point in panicking right now.” Casey stowed his lockpicks, begrudgingly giving up on any plan to get Adam out of those shackles. “Pipe. What sort of brilliant plan to get rid of you are we talking about?”

“An auction. Total black-market, word-of-mouth invitation only, in-person, on-the-DL type of shindig, set for this Friday night.”

Friday night. Ilda struggled to keep her face a blank mask. Friday night, Pipe was supposed to be attending the Ascension Day charity auction and black-tie ball at the Teatro Metropolitano, not
selling a human being
to God only knew who and for what purpose.

But Adam wasn’t done. “Think about it. The minute the various and sundry terrorist organizations of the world know a real-live Faraday is available for purchase, we’re fucked—I mean, imagine what the press will do with this if it’s made public—but Pipe stands to rake in millions. Maybe even billions.” Reaching out, he squeezed Casey’s shoulder. “Best bet is to buy me.”

Billions
. It was beyond comprehension, the sheer amount of money these two spoke of so casually. Ilda cleared her throat, feeling suddenly vulnerable, exposed where they stood, as if Pipe himself could see them. “Casí. We have to go.” She blinked against the unexpected tears and met Adam’s sympathetic gaze. “I’m so sorry. I... I’m...”

He held out a hand, palm upward, and she grasped it, fingers clenching around his. “You keep our girl safe, yeah?”

Again, words failed her, so she simply nodded. Already she cared about this young man, feared for him as she had long ago worried over her sister.

A crash sounded from the main section of the stable, followed by raucous laughter and what sounded like a drunken rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” The brigadiers had evidently decided to remember their duties.

Ilda shot Casey a frantic look, but Adam remained calm. “Lock me in and go.” When it seemed as though Casey would argue, Adam shoved him through the stall door and closed it himself. “
Go
, dumbass.”

Hissing under his breath, Casey reattached the padlock. “I’m coming back for you.”

“I know.”

Light edged around the corner from the aisle, the singing growing louder, and they were out of time. Fisting the fabric between her shoulder blades, Casey dragged her into the end stall, right on her heels as he grabbed for the sliding door. “Go, go,
go
,” he whispered, and shoved her through the door—right over the edge of the ravine, nothing but air beneath her feet, her body weightless with terror.

On a silent scream, Ilda fell.

Chapter Thirteen

Casey sensed the moment Ilda lost her footing, the momentum from his push driving her forward into the treacherous ravine. Tightening his hold on her tank top, he yanked her backward, sliding the barn door closed as quietly as possible at the same time. As soon as that was done, he looped his arm around her waist and hauled her body against his, leaving her feet dangling off the ground.

There was no time to lose, on the chance he hadn’t been as stealthy as he thought and the guards decided to investigate the door and what lay beyond. Steeling his grip on her, he grabbed the metal stake to his left and, planting one boot on the teensy path, swung them around the massive blue plastic rainwater tank affixed to the stable exterior. The metal stake, along with some questionable-looking bungee cords, kept the tank upright under the weight of the water it collected.

Pivoting on the ball of his foot, he brought them to a sudden stop on the other side of the tank, their bodies hidden from view should the door open. Feet steady on the path, he shifted Ilda in his arms until he brought her shoulders to the exterior wall.

Uncontrollable shaking had taken hold of her, adrenaline and fear coursing through her body. Concern gripped him by the throat, and he soothed her the only way he knew how. Crowding her up against the wall, he gently hooked her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and let her cling. He pressed as much of his weight as he dared into her, knowing she needed to feel secure, knowing his hulking body had always made her feel so in the past.

His strength was good for many things, but none so vital in this moment as easing Ilda’s fear.

Nuzzling her ear, he feathered kisses over her cheek, jaw, throat. “Can’t believe you already forgot what I said.” he whispered as he ran his hands comfortingly over her ribs, her hips and thighs. Up and down, back and forth. “I’ve got you, Ilda. I’ve always got you. Shh, now, shh.” She trembled so violently, her face tucked tight to the side of his neck, and he started to worry she wouldn’t calm, despite the fact that she clung to his torso like a monkey.

“I f-fell.”

Never
. He’d never let her fall. “Nah, baby. Look at us standing here, safe and sound.” He adjusted his hold so one arm looped beneath her bottom, his other hand continuing to stroke a firm, reassuring pattern along her side, cotton to skin to cotton again. “You didn’t fall.”

Her voice trembled below a whisper, but she was so close he needn’t strain to hear her. “Because you caught me.”

“I never let go of you in the first place.” He listened intently for any sounds coming from within the stable, though nothing penetrated the thick old walls. Leaving Adam chained inside that dirty box of a stall went against Casey’s every instinct, but he was smart enough to recognize the logic of the move.

Adam had accepted in an instant what Casey struggled to see—that until Ilda was ready to leave Colombia with him, he couldn’t go. Before, he’d seen his heart as being pulled in opposite directions, that he’d need to surrender Ilda and Arlo in order to save Adam, or vice versa. But in a short few minutes, Adam had pulled the wool from his eyes and shown him that the three of them were a package deal. It was up to Casey to figure out how to liberate those he loved, in one fell swoop.

He could do that. He
would
do that. “Let’s get you back to the hacienda.”

If anything, she gripped him tighter, her thighs a heated vise that had him hardening against his will. The rush of action, the incredible nearness of her luscious body, the constancy of his need for her—worse now than it had ever been four years ago—it all wreaked havoc on his control, mental and physical. But he ignored it, had to, because this was not the time nor the place. They might be out of sight, but noise was still a factor, and Casey had done enough recon in the past two days to know there were cameras just around the corner. For all he knew, they picked up audio as well as video.

He enjoyed a little bit of exhibitionism as much as the next guy, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Not yet, anyway. He shook his head against her mulish resistance and placed his lips to her ear. “We can’t stay here.”

“Please don’t move.” Her hips shifted against his, bringing his erection in contact with her barely covered center. “Not yet. I’m not ready yet.” Yearning layered her words, yearning and fear.

It locked him in place as unyielding as the shackles binding Adam’s wrists. Worse still, she moved again, a melting of her softest place against his hardest, like a dance. He remembered how they danced before, and it always led to the same conclusion. “No, baby, don’t do that.” He stifled a groan as she committed to her writhing tease, grinding firmly over his cock. “It’s just the rush, the endorphins.”

“Don’t care.”

He nipped the tendon along her throat in warning. “This isn’t the right time or place,” he hissed, parroting his earlier thoughts, but now
he
needed the reminder. His hands fell to her ass, palmed those perfectly round cheeks and squeezed.

She gasped and gave a delighted little wriggle. “Time and place hasn’t stopped you before.”

“Ilda.”

“No, no. I can be quiet. I promise.” Apparently done arguing, she began to cajole, stroking over his shoulders, the perspiring skin of his nape, tunneling through his buzzed hair. “Please, Casí.” Her lips pressed to his neck, beneath his ear. “Please, I’m so confused.”

He leaned into her even more, relishing the press of her full breasts against his chest. “How are you confused?” The yearning in her voice morphed into something resembling pain, and he was helpless to not take that pain from her. It was his
duty
, as her husband, her right to demand it of him as his wife.

“Us. You and me,
marido
...we’re a mess.” Her trembling had him flattening her to the exterior wall, his bruising grip moving from her bottom to her naked thighs. She raked her fingernails gently over his scalp, her excited breaths warm at his ear. “I want to say I don’t know what to do, but it’s a lie. I
do
know. I’m just... I’m not ready.”

She wasn’t speaking of this, between them, but of his reappearance, his demands, how he was practically fucking begging her to leave with him. His selfishness was hurting her, but he didn’t know how to be less selfish where she was concerned. Ilda, singular Ilda, made him gluttonous for every inch of her, inside and out. He was ready. No matter what she said, he was ready, but he knew enough to realize that he had no clue what it really meant to be a husband. A father.

Reassure her
. His thumbs dug into toned muscle, kneading her, forcing her to widen those thighs just a titch more. He kissed her jaw. “You have to be
so
quiet, baby. Not a sound, understand?” A thought struck him, worry and wonder at once. “Condoms. I...we didn’t use one the other day.” And he didn’t have one on him now.

She tensed in his arms momentarily before melting into him once more. “I can’t get pregnant.”

He shouldn’t poke, he knew he shouldn’t. But—”You can’t because...?”

Her breath shuddered out. “Because I had the doctor tie my tubes after Arlo was born.” She sighed and buried her face in his shoulder. “It was a difficult birth, and...and I don’t know what you want me to say, Casí.” Her whisper broke with her next words. “I-I didn’t want any more children if they couldn’t be yours.”

His eyes went wet, and he squeezed them shut. Now he was the one clinging, his arms banding around her as he attempted to absorb her into his pores. He simply clutched her to him, needing to lock his knees to keep them both upright. Every breath sawed in his lungs, the humid night air expanding in his chest until his entire body was a giant bruise. He could barely process all that her statement implied.

That she’d suffered so greatly in carrying Arlo.

That she’d mourned him so deeply that she couldn’t countenance carrying another child—a brother or sister for Arlo—if he wasn’t the father.

That he’d denied her the chance at future children by not watching the goddamn satellite footage all the way through four years ago. If he had, he would’ve returned to Colombia, found her, taken her,
kept
her. He would have been the man to help her through that difficult birth, done what Pipe had and cared for her.

In the back of his mind, he realized as he inhaled her shower-fresh scent, he had thought he would get a second chance. An opportunity for a do-over, once he got Ilda and Arlo out of Medellín. It may have been skipping seven steps ahead, but he’d been banking on another baby with her, somewhere down the road. It wasn’t anything his conscious mind had been aware of, but now that the thought had taken root, Casey struggled against the onslaught of grief.

Except he had no right to grieve. He’d barely figured out the husband thing, much less fatherhood, in the handful of days for which it had been his reality. How could he want more, already? But it wasn’t more he wanted, only all of it. He wanted the entire daddy experience, every minute of it—but there were no minutes to be had if he didn’t get his family to safety.

“You said to remind you why you fell for me.” She nodded, and he eased his grip, settling her against the wall again and sweeping his hands up her thighs to tease the hem of her tiny shorts. “I’ll never know why you approached me in the first place, Ilda, but I know why you kept coming back.” Reaching between their bodies, he yanked aside the crotch of her cotton shorts, thrilling in her lack of panties as he dipped two fingertips into her wetness. “Oh, feel that. You know, too.”

She muffled her moan against his jaw.

He couldn’t keep from talking. “I want my mouth here, baby,” he whispered, stroking along her slick folds. “Want my tongue dipping in, fucking you.” One of his fingers slid deep, and she made the best noise. “No, no, you can’t whimper like that. God, it makes my cock so fucking hard, but you can’t.”

Her teeth scraped along the stubbled line of his jaw, the hot, wet clasp of her a temptation he had no hope of denying. “Want another finger? Can you take another for me—? Oh, you good girl.” He had two fingers buried in her now, pumping slowly in and out, the rough pads of his fingertips pressing and petting against the spot on her inner wall that made her clench and gasp and scrape her nails aggressively over the back of his neck.

His cock hurt, he was so hard, and he shifted his hips to thrust against her, bumping his knuckles and her clit. He was uncoordinated, constrained and limited, but she didn’t seem to care. Hell, neither did he.

Sliding his littlest finger through her wetness and between the taut cheeks of her bottom, he circled her entrance there. “Remember when you gave up this perfect ass to me?” He tongued the spot beneath her ear as he applied pressure with his finger. “Nod if you remember.”

Ilda nodded, her breath catching audibly, and Casey felt another piece of his control dissolve into nothingness. “Yeah, I remember, too. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten off on the memory of taking you here. That night on the roof of your building, when I slid in deep, filled you good and fucked you slow and hard. And you
loved
it.” He slipped inside then, effectively penetrating both of her exquisite holes. “So fucking hot, baby. God, I want it again. I want this fine ass
now
, Ilda, but I want to take my time, and time’s what we don’t have.”

Her moan this time was loud—too loud. Covering her mouth with the hand not busy pleasuring her, he leaned into her, using his weight to pin her to the wall, leaving her no chance of falling or escaping. Yet her writhing form kept rubbing him right, so right, and he reveled in the friction created by this new angle. “Look how wet you are, just from three fingers filling you.”

Her breaths puffed against his hand, her tongue darting out to trace a pattern on his palm. To stifle his own needy groan, he sank his teeth into the side of her neck, uncaring whether he left a mark behind this time, laving the skin with his own tongue. “You taste so sweet to me, Ilda. Especially here.” He thrust his fingers deeper inside her. “I could get down on my knees right now and settle you in for a ride on my tongue. Is that what you want?”

She didn’t speak, but her eyes, when he lifted his head to study her face in the shadows of the night sky, pleaded with him for something else. Something more.

Withdrawing his fingers from her body and removing his hand from across her mouth, he gripped her backside firmly, tipping his forehead to hers. “If you let my cock inside you again, Ilda, it’s because you want a future with me, understand? Can’t just scratch an itch, even if the scratching is the best we’ve ever had. I love you too much. God, I never
stopped
loving you.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat that told him the truth of it, even as he spoke the words. “I will always love you.”

“Casí.”

“If this is only fucking, I can’t do it again.” He bit back the name he wanted to give her. His
fénix
. “It’ll destroy m—”

Her lips sealed to his, cutting off his words with a kiss that stole his breath and shredded his heart. That soft mouth, that teasing tongue, she drugged him, dragging him under until his head swam. Only a single point of clarity pulsed in the darkness, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t put name to it again if she wasn’t willing to meet him halfway. Damn, even a third of the way would work for him. Just so long as she let him into her body, her mind, her heart and allowed him to be the husband and father he so desperately needed to be.

She broke away and settled her lips against his ear. “When I met you, when I looked into your eyes, I thought you were my missing half. Until that point, I hadn’t known half of me was missing, but it was. It was.” A gentle kiss to his ear, so soft as to be barely tangible. “That’s why I married you, Casey Faraday.”

“That’s why I married
you
, Ilda Almeida.” His cheek pressed against hers, he adjusted his hold on her, one arm looping beneath her bottom as he tore at his fly, desperate to relieve his aching erection from its confines and find freedom in her gorgeous cunt. Another tug at the crotch of her shorts, and he tested her entrance with his blunt, heavy head. “You ready for me?”